All through European history, the intervals of peace, during which reconstruction and progress overcame the ravages of war, were secured by a temporary equilibrium between the Great Powers of the day.
It is obvious that there was no such equilibrium on 23 February 2022, when Russian columns started rolling towards Kyiv, and Russian President Vladimir Putin had just described Ukraine not merely as Russian, but as the homeland of the very first Russian state: Kievan Rus’.
That warning of an imminent invasion was quickly confirmed by satellite photographs of long columns of Russian armoured vehicles preparing to advance. It was then that the US President, the French President and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, together with every other active European ally, had an opportunity to arrange an emergency meeting and issue a categorical warning to Russia, dovetailed with a convincing promise of maximum support to Ukraine.
There had been plenty of time to prepare for that moment — in fact eight years, given thinly disguised Russian soldiers had first infiltrated and then invaded the two Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in April 2014, when Crimea was also seized.
But when the moment came, and Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, there was no cohesive and determined power ready to respond quickly and effectively. Nato had done just that several times during the Cold War, by promptly reinforcing threatened allies with thousands of air-lifted troops from the so-called “Allied Command Europe Mobile Force”.
That, however, was the old, pre-enlargement Nato, which was still a veritable military alliance of countries capable of defending themselves, and help weaker allies in trouble, and whose chronically weak Mediterranean member states, with the most resplendent uniforms and least combat strength, had no Russian troops on their borders.
But once very deserving yet utterly indefensible countries such as Estonia were included in Nato — along with Poland, which mustered just 42,000 combat soldiers out of its population of 33 million a mere three months before Putin’s full-scale invasion began — it stopped being an effective military alliance.
Instead, it became a kind of social club. The Nato calendar is full of meetings at the “Supreme Allied Headquarters” in Mons in Belgium, where all manner of military and related issues are addressed often very professionally and quite freely — except that nobody is allowed to mention, however politely, even the most glaring military shortcomings of fellow allies, which undermine important war plans.
The highpoint of the Nato calendar is the splendid summits with all flags flying, in which the arrival of new countries is greatly celebrated, regardless of their ability to actually defend themselves. Both heads of state and heads of government are invited to those gatherings on the premise that there is strength in numbers, with no concerns about the inherent difficulty of reaching any agreements in such a vast crowd.
In the last summit, held in Washington DC in July 2024, Biden’s confusion of President Zelensky with Putin added a touch of humour to otherwise gloomy proceedings: nobody in attendance offered any suggestions on how to end the war in Ukraine.
What proves that Nato is no longer a genuine military alliance was that nothing was done in the last pre-war days before Putin’s invasion finally began. The satellite intelligence that revealed Russian forces on the move also showed that they were already in assault formations. But even then, five days remained to fly fighter-bomber squadrons to forward bases.
Yet even inaction would have been better than what actually happened. Instead of ordering the rapid deployment of tactical airpower to bases in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, the Biden administration instead evacuated US diplomats from Kyiv, starting a panic that induced the evacuation of some 20 other diplomatic missions.
For its part, the German government made clear that the Nordstream II pipeline project, further increasing Berlin’s dependence on Russian gas, would not be stopped even if Ukraine were invaded.
Only the courageous determination of Zelensky, together with his Defence Minister Resnikov and Kyiv’s stalwart mayor, prevented a collapse — starting the resistance that continues until today.
It is enough, then, to review the sequence of events to understand why Putin was not deterred back in February 2022: there was no watchful Great Power in Europe to do the deterring alongside the United States, thereby replacing the loss of Nato’s operational capacity and deterrent credibility caused by its expansion into indefensible territory.
But a recent and seemingly uneventful meeting between the leaders of Britain, France and Germany clearly suggests where that missing Great Power may be found: in a solid strategic compact, carefully negotiated between the three countries to jointly support the US response to an imminent crisis — or, if necessary, to induce a US response they jointly favour.
Whatever the differences between the three governments, they could certainly act with much greater agility than Nato as a whole ever could. Tripartite agreement is clearly easier than contending with dozens of European Nato members, from Estonia to Norway to Spain.
Except for Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, no Nato member deliberately obstructs alliance decisions. But each has its own objections to joint action against particular countries. For example, the populations of Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and North Macedonia are predominantly Christian Orthodox, and their governments are typically unwilling to act against Orthodox Serbia — or indeed against Russia itself.
As Islamic countries, Turkey and Albania are very likely to object to any action against a Muslim antagonist, while the government of the day of any member state may object to any use of force if the ruling coalition at that time happens to include a pacifist party.
Even if none of those specific obstacles to prompt action appear in any given crisis, the civil and military representatives of each member state will still want to be heard when the use of force is imminent, and that alone could fatally delay responding to a sudden threat.
Against all those impediments to quick action, the alternative of a permanent three-country compact — in effect a synthetic Great Power — is very promising.
“A permanent three-country compact — in effect a synthetic Great Power — is very promising.”
There are, of course, obvious challenges. For one thing, even a synthetic Great Power must have formidable capabilities, and these days neither the UK, France nor Germany is a veritable Great Power.
That category is defined by the ability to wage war independently, without needing any significant support from allies. To be sure, Britain did exactly that in reconquering the Falklands from Argentina, sending an expeditionary fleet over an unprecedented 8,000 miles in a display of strategic courage, which almost failed because of the bravery of a handful of Argentinian pilots — and which would have been suicidal against a more competent adversary.
If, however, the limitations of the three powers are well known, the magnitude of their combined capabilities should not be underestimated.
When it comes to ground forces, the British Army these days has some 70,000 soldiers all told, while its French counterpart is under 100,000. Yet both contain a high proportion of units that are actually capable of fighting, in contrast to most other Nato armies.
As for the German army, it had shrunk to less than a tenth of its Cold War strength under Angela Merkel, who ridiculed Trump’s call for more spending in 2018 as totally unnecessary in peaceful Europe — even though Russian forces had already infiltrated southeast Ukraine.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine caused as much confusion as alarm in Germany, as in most of Europe, because under various labels pacifist parties constrained both thinking and defence budgets. It is only now, under its newly installed Chancellor Friedrich Merz, that a serious rearmament effort is finally underway. It is set to focus on armoured forces — still the German specialty — which would complement British and French light infantry and commando units.
The synthetic Great Power proposed here would be much better off at sea, where the British and French fleets each operate aircraft carriers. Both fleets also have nuclear-powered submarines, much less vulnerable than surface vessels and armed to attack enemy ships and subs alike. The latter also do not need large numbers to control vast ocean areas: if just half of the 10 now operated by the British and French navies were deployed, they could interdict any Russian naval operations in Atlantic and Arctic waters.
As with the ground forces, the size of the British and French air forces is less important than the fact that they “are for real”. Thus while the Royal Air Force, the Italians and the Spanish all operate Eurofighters with a significant bombload, only the RAF has actually used them to attack the Houthis from its sovereign base in Cyprus (another overlooked British asset): even though they were inflicting a great deal of damage on the Italian and Spanish economies and almost none on the British.
In theory, this gap is just a matter of politics, but there is also a fixed cultural difference: Royal Air Force pilots are ready and even eager for action, a sentiment shared by French pilots who until recently flew many distant missions into Africa.
A simple decision by the British, French and German governments to operate a joint foreign and defence policy coordination office would be quite sufficient to announce the arrival of the Great Power missing from the European scene.
There would be no need to burden this office with any duties except a timely response to active or imminent threats of war, meaning it would only require the designation of very few senior diplomats and military officers of each country, seconded from their ordinary duties to serve as joint “crisis managers”.
The one thing necessary to make it work is that these individuals would each need immediate access to their respective leaders in the event of a crisis, overcoming the inevitable resistance of all others who must be left out.
The mere announcement that Britain, France and Germany had decided to coordinate conflict policies from a single joint office would no doubt trigger outrage, protests and even nervous breakdowns in the left-out European capitals that still pretend to matter — even as they refuse to help with the Houthis let alone Putin. Brussels, too, would be outraged, where for all her charms President Ursula von der Leyen cannot conceal the inability of the European Commission to help assure Europe’s safety from threats large or small.
Having fought with and against each other in two world wars, France, Germany and the United Kingdom now have a new opportunity to combine forces and endow Europe with the Great Power it urgently needs. If they do not act, more wars are likely.
